to deal with a disturbing reality on how
leaders and the led interrelate.
We have been hearing that we cannot
shut down civilization, society or even
stop the economic engine that supplies
the world on the premise that a disrupted
economic system may take decades to
revamp. Sounds like a question of whether
the economy is made for us or us for the
economy.
It was the first time in living memory the
leader of the free world failed the world as
the response to the pandemic by America
was the epitome of indecision and foot
dragging that left the rest of the world
baffled as at what to do since America has
always blazed the way.
Trumps prevarication and goal shifting
tactics which amounted to inaction lost
America precious time in its effort to
bring the pandemic under control early
and although he initially praised China’s
handling of the epidemic, he did not
follow their example.
He made matters worse by punishing
WHO which effectively sent out the
message that he would not listen to their
advice and by suspending funding to the
world body he compromised their ability
to assist other countries that badly needed
game plans for the epidemic.
Trump’s hard ball stance on China who
he now accused of starting the pandemic
and of hiding pertinent information
about the virus meant that the world was
not given the chance to use Chinese style
response to combat the virus in a global
cooperative manner.
The president’s complacency and his
own words lulled the rest of the world
to believe that this flu was not such a big
deal and by the time the world realized
that the medical crisis was real everyone
reacted in their own way rather than forge
a united approach.
America was caught napping by the
virus and the governors tired of waiting
for direction from the federal level took
the matters in their own hands to deal
with the virus spread the best way they
knew how but again not in a coordinated
manner.
To add insult to injury Trump turned his
guns on his own governors and started
to criticize them and actually withheld
It was the first time in living memory the
leader of the free world failed the world as
the response to the pandemic by America
was the epitome of indecision and foot
dragging that left the rest of the world
baffled as at what to do since America has
always blazed the way.
support and soon the whole corona issue
had been politicized along party lines and
there was no cohesion in America on how
to deal with the pandemic.
Next the president decided to either
ignore or often fire medical professionals
that did not tow his rhetoric and
challenged scientists who gave opinion
that contradicted what his bias was and
so the massive American machinery just
froze.
Incredibly Trump is on record touting
unproven cures for the virus to declaring
that it will go away by itself and currently
America does not have a long range plan
for containing this virus or any contagious
disease that may occur in the future.
Trump has not only let down
the Americans but he has been a
disappointment to the whole world that
traditionally has looked to America for
leadership. He has provoked widespread
distrust with all his neighbors making
regional cooperation impossible.
As it is quite clear that America is not in
a position to lead the global response to
the corona virus it has fallen on individual
countries to forge plans about how to
contain the pandemic and we selected the
following few countries to illustrate how
the leadership took action.
Let us begin with China where the virus
is supposed to have originated from and
we see the Chinese government swinging
into action as soon as the outbreak in
Wuhan could either not be kept under
wraps or the virus was going rapidly out
of control.
We would expect that the most seriously
ravaged country in the world today should
have been China, but no, knowing that
they did not have a vaccine to combat
the spread of the virus they did the most
sensible thing, lockdown Wuhan.
We can still see images of the PPE clad
Chinese fumigating the streets of Wuhan
and the amazing feat of building a brand
new hospital in Wuhan to cater for the
huge number of patients that they were
expecting.
As it turned out after a strict lockdown for
two months the town began to cautiously
open up, the hospital was closed and a
type of normalcy was restored to the town,
China’s reported cases are 83,022 and
deaths at 4,634.
China did not have to lockdown the whole
country and one would think that if the
world borrowed that game plan the world
should have already stemmed the spread
of the virus and we should now have been
supervising a monitoring exercise having
returned to a new normal.
It really doesn’t matter whether you
believe that the figures from China are
underreported or not the main issue
is whether they have the virus under
control. To spend time as Trump has done
apportioning blame for the virus seems
supremely counterproductive.
India, across the border from China
decided to lockdown and has so far
managed to contain the virus spread to a
199,000 and a death toll of 5,598, so the
two most populous countries in the world
have less than 300 thousand cases out of
the current global 6.3 million.
In contrast the USA is grappling with over
1.9 million cases and a death toll well over
107 thousand and the virus has not yet
shown signs of abating. The difference is
clearly the leadership style adopted by the
respective countries.
To confirm this assertion is the fact that
Canada which is in the same geographical
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